Secrets of Trapping Pieces: One Blog to Link Them All
All well and good. I was ready to transition back to my usual 40-60 hours a week of studying and playing chess, with a couple hours a week of receiving coaching.
Sigh. Then feedback intervened. Shortly after publishing I got a review that while my book was interesting it was too difficult for a player who indicated he was rated almost 1700 USCF! And my coach, IM Attila Turzo, suggested that I had written a text suitable for titled players. But not the 99% of the folks who do not have a title. Double sigh. 
So after chewing on those notions for a while I decided to write a prequel. An Introduction to the topic of Trapping Pieces. And to both test out some ideas and provide extra motivation I set out to provide some blogs for anyone on chess.com who might actually glance at my blog and provide some useful feedback. Meanwhile, on chessable.com I provided links to the chess.com blogs for all those brave souls who purchased my first book. And bored my non-chess playing friends by posting links to the blogs on other social media sites I frequent.
But where to start? 
by qimono from pixabay.com
In line with my well-known KISS Principle (Keep it Simple, Smith) I decided to start with Knights, same as in the book. New material so I'd also learn something and this time I got to add pictures!
Secrets of Trapping 
Knights!
It was a dark and gloamy Knight...yes, "gloamy" is a made up word. But it should be a word since "gloam" is.
I started with two blogs where an ecclesiastical authority, the Bishop, joined forces with a friendly assistant to duel with their competing minor piece.
Knight Trapped by Knight
Knight_Spectacular by Public Domain Pictures from pixabay.com
But Knights in the medieval ages were more likely to have to deal with infantry with pikes than meet their peers on the battlefield. So, Knight Trapped by Pawns!
This looked at the ugly scenario where mere Pawns dare the Knight to come into the minefield under their control.
From peasants, serfs and other downtrodden peoples I moved right to the top of the pyramid:
Secrets of Trapping Pieces: Knight Trapped by King + Piece The original blog was accidentally deleted. This link now takes you to the blog as it was reconstructed on 19 Feb 2024.
Secrets of...oh, wait. Took a short break.
After that opening interlude, it was time for a REAL change of pace. And I decided to go all Monty-Pythonesque because I had just happened across the silliest titled player, rated game I had ever seen.
...and now for something completely different!
Well, that was fun. But a bit off-topic for my trappiest year ever. So, back to the sujet de l'année (topic of the year)!
Secrets of Trapping 
Bishops!
I eventually got to what I thought would be a straightforward topic. Bishops Trapped by Pawns. That rather quickly evolved into five related blogs as there are a shocking number of low and high-level games where this topic is crucial to success or failure on the board.
Bishop Trapped by Pawns Part 1 of 5
Bishop Trapped by Pawns Part 2 of 5
Bishop Trapped by Pawns Part 3 of 5
Bishop Trapped by Pawns Part 4 of 5
Bishop Trapped by Pawns Part 5 of 5
So had I exhausted the topic of Bishop traps? Hardly! I didn't want folks thinking Bishops only found themselves surrounded by enemy Pawns. So I threw in a good glance at the topic of a Bishop caught offsides by a Rook and Pawn.
Bishop Dominated by Rook + Pawn
Later in the year I returned to this topic because of an interesting illustrative game I had found that shows how much patience can be required to wring any drop of an advantage out of a situation where a Rook is trapped by a Bishop and Pawn. As you might suspect, this game is included in my next book. With a few additional details that did not translate well into this blog. And no poem at the end in the book.
I never did find time to blog about a Bishop being trapped by a Knight and Pawn(s), though it does receive coverage in my next book. Of course, my second book doesn't include everything. For instance, I left out Bishops trapped by a Queen and Pawns, though there are some quite interesting games that revolve around that theme. Maybe I'll get to that in an update to the book if and when it is published in 2024.
Secrets of Trapping 
Rooks!
Fantasy Rook by enrique from pixabay.com
I'd forgotten that Rook is also the name of a bird. Until I was looking for an intriguing picture of a Rook and this was the best I could come up with.
I will mention that Rooks can be trapped by a Bishop and Pawn in numerous ways, and less frequently by a Knight and Pawn, or simply trapped in the corner. But the deadline to submit my second chess book was approaching so I settled for discussing one Rook topic in blogs. This topic first came to my attention about a decade ago when a friend of mine purposely fianchettoed both their Rooks against me in a casual game. Not because they needed to, simply because they were playing for a laugh!🤣🤪
Secrets of Trapping 
Queens!
I have a lot of material on trapping Queens. With the most complex cases involving Poisoned Rooks as three results are often on the board after a Queen eats a Rook in the corner and the next three to thirty moves are all about whether or not She is trapped...and whether or not there is sufficient compensation if She is indeed trapped. I also collected a fair passel of Poisoned Pawn traps, including traps where the trap sometimes fails due to rather sophisticated maneuvering. More interesting to me were the examples of a Queen trapped by Knights or a Knight and Pawns
But I was busy, so the only area I managed to blog about was Knights and Foot Soldiers Hunting Her Majesty AKA, a Queen trapped by a Knight and Pawns.
Secrets of Trapping 
Kings!
Everybody knows that Kings get trapped, but we usually think of that ending in checkmate, and the occasional perpetual check or stalemate. But everybody writes about mating patterns. So I decided to focus on traps of His Majesty that result in a broader set of concessions, to include material and positional concessions. To ease into the topics I usually started with a known mating pattern and then expanded my horizons to look at positions that don't result in checkmate but share similarities with the known pattern. In my book I also examine Smothered Configurations and Kings trapped by a Knight and some other piece.
Again, limits on my time reduced me to blogging about only two configurations of interest.
A Very Trappy Game
The danger of writing a chess book is you may become enamored of your own "very special knowledge." I played a game where I got to explore three topics in my second chess book: Bishop trapped by Pawns, Zugzwang, and Rook trapped by Bishop and Pawns.
Sigh. I got the first two parts exactly right. And completely fell apart in executing the third piece of my master plan. Which turned out to be amateurish in terms of game results. But it was certainly educational!
We don't need no education
We don't need no thought control
No dark sarcasm in the classroom
Teacher, leave them kids alone.
From the song Another Brick in the Wall performed by Pink Floyd. Written by George Roger Waters.
So...I blogged about my misadventure: A Beautiful Loss
Secrets of Writing A Chess Book!
Well, it seemed logical to write about my experience putting together the first book. At some point in the future I'll blog about the process I went through with the second book.
My Experience Writing a Chess Book
If you want more on those topics I'm afraid you'll probably have to wait until my next book on trapped pieces is published. Who knows when that will happen! (Spring 2024 is a reasonable guesstimate.) Until then I plan to focus on other topics.
My Final Blog of 2023
uhm...you're looking at it.
